Friday, 6 January 2012

A Lazy 'Cut and Paste' News Post...

Because it's been a while since I've done one of these :o) Here goes...

From the email,

New Eric Brown Title Comes To Solaris

...we’re happy to announce that we have acquired Serene Invasion, a brand new novel by award-winning SF author Eric Brown. The novel will be delivered at the end of 2012 for a summer 2013 publication. The agent was John Jarrold, and the deal was for UK/US rights.

Serene Invasion spans the first twenty-five years following an entirely peaceful invasion of Earth by aliens who believe they are saving humanity from self-destruction. The novel opens in 2025, with the world plagued by war, terrorist attacks, poverty and increasingly desperate demands for water, oil, resources. The West and China are sending forces into Africa and South America in order to 'stabilise' regimes, but in reality to garner precious land on which to farm intensively, mine for resources and drill for oil. Much of the global conflict surrounds the dearth of natural resources in an overpopulated world, with the rich West and China doing nothing to alter their materialistic life-style. And then the Serene arrive…

Eric’s highly-acclaimed Kings of Eternity was published in 2011, going on to top several ‘best of’ lists in the New Year, and the imprint also published his novels Helix, Xenopath, Necropath, Cosmopath, Kethani, Engineman, and Guardians of the Phoenix.

“I'm delighted to be doing The Serene Invasion for Solaris,” said Brown. “It's a book that has been on the back-burner for years, and a project I'm very excited about. Alien invasion with a difference, set in Britain, India and Africa, featuring a varied cast of human characters who each in their own way respond to the coming of the Serene.”

“For me, Eric is up there with the greats – Silverberg, Clarke, Leiber,” said Jonathan Oliver, editor-in-chief at Solaris. “So it’s always a delight to bring a new work by this brilliant author to genre fans.”

That's quite the comparison from Jonathan Oliver. Is Eric Brown that good? I haven't read any of his stuff so wouldn't know. Anyone care to comment?﻿

If you like a bit of free reading (which has to be all of us, right?) then the following could be for you.
From the email,

Genre author Stephen Hunt has made the first novel of his two-book 'Six Against The Stars' science fiction series free for readers to download on the Amazon Kindle. The free download offer is running from now until the end of Sunday 8th January.

Here’s the book’s blurb…

As the self-proclaimed biggest coward in the galaxy, Horatio has it easy on what passes for 40th century America. A much-favoured sycophant in the court of the King of Earth, Horatio lives in a genetically engineered paradise where there’s a vat-grown slave waiting around every marble column with a bunch of grapes to drop into his oh-so perfectly designed mouth.

Unfortunately for Horatio, the artificial intelligence that rules the great mass of humanity spread across the stars has other plans for this feckless seducer. So, if you ever wonder how the galaxy’s biggest coward finds himself actually trying to save it, you’re not alone… but then, unfortunately, neither is our hero!

His misadventures are abetted by a psychotic Martian warrior, a robot who thinks it’s related to Sherlock Holmes, a beautiful genetically enhanced assassin, a scientist with a computer for a brain, and a millennia-old clone who was alive when the last U.S. President was executed by a firing squad.It’s six against the galaxy. Six against the stars. They’ll save the universe… but they might damage it first.